Ramage realized that Southwick was standing nearby, obviously anxious to say something but unwilling to interrupt. Southwick always knew when he was away in another country and often another century.

"Ah, Southwick, this is probably the last time we'll ever see these mules in such good order!"

Southwick laughed and dismissed them with a-wave of his hand. "I was watching those masters at the conference: that question you put Mr Yorke up to asking had an effect! You looked so fierce that every one of them could see the Calypso towing them under. Worth five dozen warning shots, that bit o' play-acting."

"I hope no one got the wrong idea," Ramage said. "I'll tow when needed, but I'll also leave 'em behind if they keep dropping astern at night."

"I heard you threaten that, sir, but you wouldn't really, would you?" Southwick's doubt was quite clear.

"They'll get a couple of warnings, maybe three, but after that I'm not keeping the convoy jilling around until after noon. Otherwise it means we get only six hours or so's sailing out of twenty-four. We have to heave-to at daylight, say five thirty am, and the mule finally gets into position by noon. By six or seven o'clock at night he's reefing or furling again and snugging down for the night - and we've had the pleasure of his company for six or seven hours, making perhaps five knots. So in the twenty-four hours the convoy's covered thirty-five or forty miles, plus a bit for current if we're lucky. Remember, Southwick, we've got to sail 3,500 miles before we reach the Chops of the Channel. Does a hundred-day passage appeal to you? I'm damned if any of these mules are going to make me wait a hundred days for news of my wife."

"I understand that, sir," Southwick said, looking round to make sure no one else could hear them, "but I was thinking of Their Lordships."

"What about Their Lordships?"

"These damned shipowners have a lot of influence, sir. If we left one of their ships behind and they complained to Their Lordships . . . why, they could even cast you in damages. You personally, sir. If a shipowner cast you in damages in the High Court, and Their Lordships then decided you should face a court-martial under one of the Articles of War ..."

"I'd be in a pickle," Ramage admitted ruefully. "But I'll have some witnesses in my favour - the Count of Rennes, which means the interest of the Prince of Wales, and Mr Yorke and the master of the Emerald."

"Mr Yorke, yes, and all the King's officers in the convoy, but beyond that, remember the old saying, 'Put not thy trust in princes'."

"We could trust the Count."

"Ah, yes, more than most men - particularly since he owes you his life. But," Southwick said carefully, "I had in mind some of his friends in England: those who'd mistake the Board of Admiralty for another kind of gaming table."

Ramage nodded because the old master's warning made a great deal of sense. Fame was a high place surrounded with traps set by jealous men. Without intending or wishing it. Ramage had become one of the Royal Navy's most famous frigate captains, not a role he had sought or particularly wanted but one which was the result of many actions, many desperate fights, many prizes taken, many of his own men killed or wounded and more of the enemy. He had taken many chances too, and occasionally disobeyed orders deliberately, but for the good of the King's service. And he always had loyal shipmates like Southwick, and seamen as brave and faithful as Jackson, Stafford and Rossi.

Yet Southwick was thinking beyond all this: his memory was going back to Ramage's childhood, when his father the Earl of Blazey was one of the youngest and certainly the most brilliant admirals in the Navy and who had been serving a government that needed a scapegoat for having sent out too small a fleet against the French and too late to do any good. Their scapegoat had been Admiral the Earl of Blazey, and his subsequent trial had split the Navy and the country.

"Let's hope the mules behave themselves," Ramage said, and Southwick nodded: he had understood all the unspoken additional qualifications, ranging from Sarah to Sidney Yorke's support and the bad luck which put at least one Beatrice in the convoy. Another half a dozen Beatrices would most probably turn up in the next week. It was remarkable how these ships generally needed extra canvas and cordage before the weather turned bad as they reached the more northern latitudes . . .

Yes, the convoy was in good shape, the box of ships sailing along easily to the northwest to skirt Bermuda, the wind steady from the southeast, with L'Espoir out ahead, La Robuste tacking and wearing along the western edge, and to windward, placing her astern of the convoy, the Calypso under easy sail, in a good position to hurry down to the convoy in an emergency - and swoop on any merchantman showing signs of furling her wings for the night.

It was time for the watch to change. In a few minutes Southwick would be relieved by Kenton. Over in the Emerald, hidden from the Calypso by the rest of the ships in the convoy, Sidney Yorke and Alexis would probably be drinking tea and talking of - what? Their forebears in Barbados and Jamaica? He shrugged and wished Sarah's face would come clearly in his memory.

Sidney Yorke spread some soft butter over the slice of bread on his plate, and nodded towards the jam dish. Alexis pushed it towards him and said: "If only this weather would last all the way to England."

"We'd take a year to get there!"

"I don't think I'd mind. London is so boring . . ."

"Really boring - for a beautiful young woman like you?" Yorke asked with mild sarcasm. "Think what it must be like for a plain young woman!"

"It's much easier," Alexis said unexpectedly, "if you're plain and your father is only moderately wealthy, then you can dance and talk vapid nonsense. But if Nature made you beautiful and you happen to have a fair competence, as everyone seems to know I have, every man in the room, whether a pimply youth or some jaded old roué, is chasing after you."

"Beauty and the beasts," Yorke teased.

"Yes," Alexis said crossly, "and even when you are there they ogle me and whisper suggestions."

"You never tell me!"

"I should think not! If you knew what some of them said, you'd call them out, even tho' duelling is forbidden now."

"Why don't you find yourself a nice husband," Yorke said banteringly. "Then he can protect you from the pimply youths and jaded roués."

"Oh yes, one looks around and finds 'nice husbands' are thick on the ground, like ripe apples after a thunderstorm. I notice you're still a bachelor and certainly you rarely approve of anyone I happen to talk to for more than four minutes."

"Well, you do seem to choose the most extraordinary men. No chins, noses like beaks, ears like mug handles, wispy moustaches and with 'fortune-hunter' embroidered all over their elegant coats."

"Dear brother," Alexis said patiently, "you don't understand and you never listen. I've met only one real man in the last two or three years. One."

"Why didn't you marry him, then?"

"He didn't ask me," she said, blushing in spite of herself.

"Oh? So being rich and beautiful isn't enough, eh?"

"He was already married," she said bitterly, and as Yorke went on to tease her she burst into tears and, gathering up her skirt with one hand and trying to hide her face with the other, she ran from the cabin.

Yorke sighed and cursed his crude tongue: the girl was probably frightened to death of ending her days as a spinster, surrounded by lapdogs of all varieties and visited daily by a fawning parson hoping to be remembered in her will. . . Alexis who, even though she was his sister and he was prejudiced, was among the half dozen women he had ever met who combined beauty, elegance and wit with a natural warmth that prevented her being distant and forbidding.